Confused by quotes in shell script

[websavages]

Hi all,

I am trying to setup an automated rsync job between my server and client. The server ssh daemon listens to port 8888 (for security reasons) and as such I have to issue the following command to get rsync to work



rsync -avz --rsh='ssh -p 8888' user@server:/remote/dir /local/dir/


Hard coding this into a sh script works, however I would like to tidy things up and use variables. So I split everything up and have the following:



RSYNC=/usr/bin/rsync
RSYNC_OPTIONS="-avz --rsh='/usr/bin/ssh -p 8888'"
RSYNC_REMOTE_HOST="user@server"

$RSYNC $RSYNC_OPTIONS $RSYNC_REMOTE_HOST:/remote/dir /local/dir/


But this results in rsync failing with the following messages:




building file list ... rsync: link_stat "/usr/local/bin/8888'" failed: No such file or directory (2)
rsync: link_stat "/usr/local/bin/user@servr:/remote/dir" failed: No such file or directory (2)



I'm guessing the single quotes are interfering in some way. Any ideas?

ws

[MadCow108]

edit: nonsense, see later post

you need to quote the variables when using them too:
$RSYNC "$RSYNC_OPTIONS" $RSYNC_REMOTE_HOST:/remote/dir /local/dir/

the quotes in the assignment are not saved in the variable

[websavages]

MadCow,

Thanks for the info, however rsync now complains about:



rsync: -avz --rsh='ssh -p 8888': unknown option
rsync error: syntax or usage error (code 1) at main.c(1318) [client=2.6.9]


Any ideas?

ws

[gmargo]

One idea: you can eliminate the "-p 8888" by putting that info in your $HOME/.ssh/config file. That will at least get rid of some spacing issues.



$ cat $HOME/.ssh/config
Host server.name.here
Port 8888

[websavages]

Hi gmargo,

You beat me to it. I have just changed my ssh_config file to remove the need for -P 8888.

Thanks for everyones help none the less.

Cheers ws

[MadCow108]

ups sorry I did not read your post properly, quoting is nonsense.

you have to force bash to reevaluate the expanded options with eval to get the quoting right:
eval "$RSYNC $RSYNC_OPTIONS $RSYNC_REMOTE_HOST:/remote/dir /local/dir/"